


Run

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, I don't know I kind of glossed over it, Iditarod, Not actual dogs, Since they're werewolves, Sterek if you squint real hard, They're all miraculously alive somehow, They're cheating the race, but not really, no one is dead, sled dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles thinks it would be kind of cool to run the Iditarod. He could sort of do with the winner's purse for college, too.</p>
<p>Scott is weak and easily convinced.</p>
<p>Derek isn't, but he agrees just to get Stiles to go away, and Laura thinks it would be a good pack bonding exercise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. If I misspelled "Scott" anywhere as "Scoot" then I'm very sorry, but my word processor's spellcheck won't pick that up.

It was Stiles, naturally, who had the idea. It was a cool November day, shortly before Christmas. He and Scott were looking at potential colleges. Scott looked set to get in on a sports scholarship, if he could keep his grades steady. Stiles – well. He’d get a loan and think about it later. Hopefully once he had a really awesome job that was really high-paying.

“You know,” Stiles said to Scott, who was sprawled on Stiles’ bed, flipping through pamphlets while Stiles browsed the internet. “The winner of the Iditarod this past year won seventy grand. The purse is gonna be even higher next year. I could use that kind of money.”

“Iditarod?” Scott repeated, glancing up from pamphlet put out by the local community college.

“That dog race. The one with the huskies. One thousand miles. Anchorage to Nome. Alaska? Ringing any bells?”

Scott shook his head. “No. What do you want with a dog race for? Are you going to bet on it?”

Stiles spun around to face Scott, leant forward to place his elbows on his knees. “I could enter it.”

“Uh. Stiles. You don’t have a dog,” Scott pointed out, gently.

“No,” Stiles said. “You’re right. I don’t. I’d need a whole team, anyway. Not just one dog.”

It suddenly occurred to Scott where Stiles was going with this. “Stiles.”

“We have a whole pack, Scotty,” Stiles said. “Think about it.”

“Don’t the competitors have to be dogs?”

Stiles shrugged. “No one would be able to tell.”

Scott fought down a feeling of impending panic, because Stiles had that look in his eye. That one he sometimes got when he was about to go and do something stupid. “Hunters might,” he said.

Stiles waved his hand dismissively. “How many hunters watch the Iditarod, really? And it’s not like it’s _really_ cheating. I mean, you’re still a canine athlete. And we do need the money.”

Scott couldn’t argue with that. They might’ve kept the bounty money – which was technically Peter’s but since Peter had put a hit out on all of them with it, no one really figured he needed it back all that much – and used it to pay off their family’s respective debts, but a little bit more wouldn’t hurt when it came time to go to college.

*

Derek growled at them when they suggested their plan.

“No.”

“Aw, come on Der. It’ll be fun,” Stiles said, in a wheedling tone.

“ _No._ ” He crossed his arms and scowled at them across his loft.

“Please. For me.” Stiles smiled winningly at him.

“I’m not running _a thousand miles_ in the snow, Stiles. That’s madness. I’d rather just pay for whatever you need that much.”

“Scotty, help me out here,” Stiles said imploringly, turning to Scott.

Scott shook his head and raised his hands. “This was your idea.”

“I’m not taking your money, dude,” Stiles said to Derek. “But – I think it would be totally the most romantic thing you could do, leading a pack of wolves across Alaska for me.”

“Why wouldn’t I lead?” Scott asked, indignant. “I’m the alpha,” he added more quietly, grumbling mostly to himself.

“Because you’d end up chasing a squirrel or an elk or moose and running us all off a cliff,” Stiles said, cheerfully. “Or into a crevice or something. I don’t know that much about the course, I’ll have to look that up later. Anyway, Derek’s been a wolf much longer. I trust him in the snow. Wait, you have been in snow before, haven’t you, Der?”

“It snowed in New York.”

Scott noticed that Derek omitted whether or not he’d hidden inside during snowy days and waited them out.

“So you’ll do it?” Stiles asked.

“What – no. I didn’t say that.”

“Come on. _Please_.” Stiles clasped his hands in front of his chest and slipped off the sofa so that he was on his knees, literally begging. Derek stared at him for a long moment.

“Fine.”

He probably only said it to get Stiles to go away.

*

Peter said no. Derek told him that if he had to do it, then Peter had to as well. And to shut up and stop bitching about it.

*

Erica and Boyd agreed readily. Isaac hesitated, muttered something about hating the cold, then decided that if everyone else was going, he might as well, too.

*

Liam was puzzled. He couldn’t work out why they wanted to run in a _dog_ race. But he said that if he could convince his parents that he was staying at a friend’s place for the estimated three weeks they would need for the race, then he would come.

*

Malia asked Stiles why the dogs ran. What was the point? Stiles told her he wasn’t sure, but possibly just for the joy of running. She shrugged and said she didn’t have anything better to do.

*

Jackson grudgingly said yes, he would run, but only because it was Scott, his alpha, who asked him, and not Stiles. And because it might be kind of cool to win an internationally famous race. Even if he did it as a “dog.”

*

Derek must’ve called Cora and Laura, because they came up from South Africa, tanned and smiling and eager. Laura said it sounded like a great pack bonding exercise. And just great exercise. Excellent for everyone’s stamina.

*

Their training schedule was a bit hit and miss.

The race was in a little over four months.

The ‘wolves and ‘coyote went out Saturdays and Sundays, shifted once they hit the trees, and ran through the Preserve and up into the mountains behind. They set a rendezvous, and then Stiles, Allison, Kira, and Lydia drove to it to meet with the hot, tired wolves at the end of their run to pick them up. They did fifty miles that first Saturday, then less the following Sunday because they were all still tired.

Stiles told them they would need to go further in a single day, when the race actually came. Some mushers did the entire thousand miles in just eight days, which meant they were doing over a hundred miles in a day.

“Of course,” Stiles said, when they were all crowded around a couple of tables in a diner on the way home again. “Most mushers have a team of sixteen, and they swap dogs out all the time. Even with _all_ of you, we’ve still only got eleven. Not really enough to let anyone switch out to have a proper rest in-between runs. You’ve got to have six dogs attached to the sled to cross the finish line, too.”

He considered that, chewing his straw. “Of course, we don’t have to worry about injuries like normal mushers.”

“No,” Derek said.

That evening they argued about running pairs, and who would be the wheel dogs and the swing dogs, since Derek was lead dog.

“Unless we have a back-up lead, you’ll have to run the entire race, buddy,” Stiles told Derek.

“I thought we were all going to run the entire thing?” Laura piped up. “No reason not to. Like you said, it’s not like we’re going to have to worry about regular things like injuries. We run hot, and we have fur coats. We’re not likely to get cold. And we won’t get _that_ tired.” Stiles thought she sounded pretty optimistic about that.

Anyway, that was the moment where Stiles realised that racing strategy had officially gone out the window. This was now a Pack Thing, and if the pack wanted to run together, then they would.

In the end, they decided that Peter and Boyd would be the wheel dogs, the two closest to the sled, as the largest and strongest, and Scott and Laura would be the swing dogs, acting as the pacesetters. The rest would be the team dogs. Erica and Cora would run together. Isaac and Liam would run together. Malia and Jackson would run together. Stiles wasn’t sure about that last pairing, and Jackson seemed even _less_ certain about it. Stiles saw the toothy grin that Malia gave Jackson, and Jackson’s faintly alarmed expression in response.

Lydia would be Stiles’ second. She agreed nonchalantly, while examining the salad menu.

*

The next weekend, the ‘wolves ran into Ethan and Aiden while they were running out beyond the Preserve. The twins were omegas. They hung around the outskirts of town, and Scott let them because his heart was too big and they didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Somehow, that day, their team was bumped from eleven to thirteen.

*

As a hunter, Allison didn’t _officially_ approve.

 _Personally_ , however, she told Stiles she thought it was hilarious, and she promised not to say a word to her father until the race had already started and it would be too late for him to stop them.

*

They flew to Alaska – Derek and Laura paid for the pack’s air tickets – for the first time the day after Christmas, and they stayed until New Years’ Eve. Stiles had found a mushing “guru” to speak to, about ninety miles out of Anchorage. She was in her early forties, with grizzled hair, and fifty-odd dogs, most of them, small, sleek husky-mutts, none of them more than sixty pounds.

“They’re built for speed,” she explained to Stiles, eyeing up Derek, who was standing beside Stiles’ leg, no leash clipped to the simple blue leather collar he was wearing. Just a big, black wolf with pale green eyes. “That dog you have there. Were you thinking of using him? I can tell you now, he’s oversize. What’s he weigh?”

“Uh,” Stiles said, glancing down at Derek. “One eighty?”

“What is he?” she asked, shrewdly, her eyes narrowing.

“A wolf.”

“You can’t use a wolf in a racing team,” she objected.

“Why not?” Stiles asked.

“They aren’t bred for it, for starters,” she replied, still staring at Derek, who glared right back. Stiles laid his hand on the back of Derek’s neck, scratching idly at his fur. Derek turned his head to snap at his hand, but it wasn’t serious and he missed Stiles’ fingers by entire _inches_. “They’re too wild.”

“Why not just see how he does?” Stiles said. “He’ll work. He’s smart, and willing.”

“Smart, maybe,” she said. “Willing? I wouldn’t say that until I’ve seen him pull. He know any commands?”

*

He did. Stiles had done his research. He’d briefed the entire team on the standard mushing commands, too. Derek could gee and haw and hike with the rest of them.

She let Derek meet her team, which he did, placidly, though Stiles could see the effort it too him not to snarl at the bouncy huskies. Then she put him in a harness his size – finding one that fit him was an effort, though she eventually let out one of the harnesses intended for a malamute wheel dog – and put him in beside her most senior lead dog. Stiles sat in the basket of the sled, and they flew off across the snow behind the mushing guru’s house, the husky-mutt’s barking and yowling in excitement, and Derek running in silent, grim determination.

After, while the dogs were lying, panting, in the snow, their tongues lolling and steam rising from their mouths as Derek sat watching them solemnly, the guru said: “I guess he can run.”

*

They flew north for the second time in January to buy gear and then the Copper Basin 300 to qualify for the Iditarod. Because it was now a Pack Thing, Stiles was not expected to pay for the expensive, lightweight sled that Derek, Laura, and Peter hemmed and hawed over for the better part of an hour in the specialty dog racing store. Nor did he have to fork out for the racing harnesses, or the little dog booties that the store clerk recommended.

“I’m not eating dog food,” Peter announced, as they left the store. “Just so we’re all clear on that fact right now.”

“Neither am I,” Scott said, quickly, before wrinkling his nose because he realised he’d just agreed with something _Peter_ had said.

“I don’t mind.” Malia shrugged. “I’ve had dog food before, when I was scavenging. It’s not too bad. Better than some things.”

*

Running their first qualifier was a learning experience and a half. Everything was new and complicated. They had to find a place where the others could shift conveniently. Convincing the ‘wolves and the ‘coyote to crowd into the dog transport truck that they’d hired for the occasion to drive down to the race start was difficult. Little confined spaces didn’t seem to agree with animals that had the minds of humans.

The vet checks were something of a trial, too.

“This is a wolf,” the veterinarian said to Stiles, when he led in Derek on a leash.

Derek did not make a very good dog. He didn’t pull on the leash, or yap excitedly like Stiles saw the other mushers’ racing dogs doing, or really do _anything_ dog-like except lift his lip irritably. He was as calm and stoic as ever, and he let the veterinarian listen to his heartbeat and respiration, and examine his teeth and paws and legs, with minimal growling.

Stiles brought in the next wolf, Laura, and the veterinarian tugged at his hair in exasperation. “That’s a wolf, too!”

“She’s a malamute mix,” Stiles replied.

By the time Stiles brought in Malia, who was sniffing the air curiously, her eyes bright, the vet had already examined Scott, Cora, Erica, Isaac, Liam, and Jackson, and he had started to look faintly ill.

“That’s a coyote,” the vet said despairingly.

Malia wagged her tail.

“Alaskan husky mix,” Stiles corrected him.

“Jesus Christ.”

Thank God Stiles took Peter last. Otherwise, the veterinarian might’ve refused to look at any more of the ‘wolves. When he saw the enormous black wolf, standing fully as high as Stiles’ navel, he went quite pale. Peter grinned, all teeth, but since he was fully shifted, it looked like a snarl.

“Stop that,” Stiles said, whacking the side of his head gently with the back of his hand.

Peter chuffed at him, and the vet hesitantly started to check him over.

Finally, all of the ‘wolves and the ‘coyote were cleared, as was their racing equipment. Then, they just had to wait for the race to begin.

The qualifier was three hundred miles. They did it in a little over three days, straggling in somewhere near the middle. All that mattered was that they qualified, though. They didn’t _want_ to come in first, partly because it would draw to much attention to them – since Stiles was a complete amateur racer with completely unknown dogs, and from California no less – and partly because they wanted to watch how the other racers did it.

Stiles thought it was interesting to watch the mushers work their dogs, and wondered if he might like to move north and train actual huskies to work one day, if the whole emissary thing didn’t work out. He did this while he cheated outrageously and just let Derek pick their path and he rode the sled.

Food was something of a challenge. They ended up taking a lot of raw venison, since it was the only thing everyone could agree on, as well as deboned fish, bags of rice, packets of frozen vegetables, and jerky. And if any of the other mushers thought it was weird that Stiles was cooking up hot stew for his “dogs” twice a day, well, they didn’t say anything.

And if he never bothered staking his “dogs” down or tying them up – well, the other mushers might’ve muttered behind their hands, but the pack behaved themselves impeccably. Except for Malia, who liked to tease the actual dogs, so Stiles had to ask Scott nicely to please keep an eye on her. Scoff huffed at him, breath steaming in the bitter air, then trotted off to round her up and shepherd her away from the other mushers’ dogs.

*

Afterwards, when they were back in their hotel, and the ‘wolves were in the shapes of humans again, Laura said to Stiles: “We’re getting some of those little doggie jackets. It’s fucking cold out there, especially when we’re not running around.”

Everyone had turned their noses up at the insulated dog coats, when they were back at the racing store before the qualifier.

“We’ll look stupid,” Peter had sniffed.

“We have _fur_ ,” Laura had agreed.

And somehow, Stiles had ended up in a puppy pile both nights they’d been outside during the qualifier, Derek curled up on one side and Scott on his other between him and Lydia, Malia on his chest, Erica on his feet, with the others squeezed into the tent around and on top of one another. It’d been a hot, uncomfortable business. He got kicked, and scratched, and elbowed in his side, and someone had a nightmare and woke everyone up by howling in the middle of the night.

“You’ll look so cute,” Stiles said, agreeing. “I’ll have to take pictures.”

*

In February, they ran the Yukon 300, and came third, again, but deliberately.

“That was the last qualifier, right?” Scott asked tiredly, afterwards.

“Yes,” Stiles said. “Next time, it’s the real deal. We’ve got less than a month to go.”

*

They were ready, and they were excited.

Scott loved it. He could run a hundred miles in a day, and still have the energy to keep going. He loved the feeling of the snow crunching beneath his paws, or the dirt under his claws, the wind in his fur, the ache of his legs after he’d been racing for hours. Whether the pack was running in the Preserve or through a blizzard, they were together and they were healthy and they were _strong_.

They hunted better, now. They were faster, could take down a deer with so much more ease. They worked better as a team. Their coats were sleek. When they were human, their skin shone with health, and their eyes sparkled. They were made of leather and iron.

Why hadn’t anyone thought of this _before_? It was great for the pack!

It was a change of pace they’d all been needing, too.

And since taking down deer was that much easier, it stood to reason that threats to Beacon Hills were easier to deal with, too.

*

It was a herd of kelpies, coming inland from the coast.

Scott knew where every one of his wolves was, instinctively.

They came away from the encounter with a couple of cracked ribs and broken bones from flailing hooves, and bites from savage horse teeth, but no fatalities.

*

In March, they flew to Anchorage, four days before the Iditarod was due to start. Allison, Kira, Lydia, and the Sheriff flew up with them.

*

“This is madness,” the Sheriff had said to Stiles. “I can’t believe you guys are going to go through with this. You know that people have _died_ running this race, right?”

 _Madness? This is Sparta_ , Stiles thought, a little wildly. He said: “I’ll be fine, Dad. I’ll be with Scotty. And Derek. And eleven other werecreatures. Literally nothing could happen to me without one of them stepping in.”

*

Stiles took Scotty, Derek, Laura, Lydia, and his father to the competitor’s banquet, two days before the race was due to begin. He introduced Derek and Laura as his sponsors – since they technically were. Scott and the Sheriff, he introduced as his family. Lydia was his second.

“You’re very young,” one of the other mushers said. “How old _are_ you?”

“Eighteen,” Stiles replied.

That garnered looks.

Apparently, the youngest winner of the Iditarod ever had been twenty-five.

Derek was twenty-five. Stiles nudged him when they were all informed that, and Derek growled at him to keep his hands to himself.

The mushers all drew tickets for starting positions. Stiles got ticket twelve.

*

On the morning of the race, they went through the process of getting the ‘wolves health checked and all of their gear cleared for the race. Again. Stiles lied through his teeth, saying that the ‘wolves were huskies and malamutes and God only knew what, but definitely _not_ wolves.

Anyone with eyes could see they were a pack of wolves plus one coyote.

There were a lot of people with cameras, taking photos and video. Stiles was nervous. The ‘wolves didn’t particularly like having cameras shoved in their faces, either. Well, Scotty didn’t mind, and Boyd was laid-back enough that he didn’t react, nor did Laura, but Derek curled his lip, Peter growled, Erica’s hackles were up, and Malia lunged at a reporter who got too close to her, yipping noisily.

To be fair, Stiles was fairly certain that Malia was only trying to scare the man because she thought it would be funny, and not trying to hurt him, but he fell down in the snow and scrambled away, looking panicked.

None of the ‘wolves made very good dogs, still. They were _terrible_ dog-actors. While the other mushers’ dogs were yowling and straining against their harnesses, ready to run, Stiles’ team – well, they sat or stood in their traces, heads and tails low, looking anxious now that the big race had finally arrived. Except for Peter, who sat there with his head held high, enjoying the attention, so long as no one got too close to him.

One by one, the mushers in front of them peeled out, and then it was their turn.

On their mark, the ‘wolves and ‘coyote surged forward as one, and Stiles had to hold onto the sled tight to avoid falling off the back. And then they were away flying down the snowy street of Anchorage. They made their way to Campbell Airstrip fleetly, paws flying over the snow, shoulders and haunches surging, and Stiles and Lydia had to hold on tight as they passed team eleven.

“Stiles!” Lydia barked from behind him. “Tell your wolves to slow down. We’ve got another _eight days_ to win this thing.”

Their Iditarider, a middle-aged man from New York city who had always loved dogs, looked faintly ill when they finally reached the airfield, and seemed very glad to see the last of them.

*

After a short flight from the Airstrip to Willow, Stiles and Lydia worked to get the ‘wolves back into harness and attached to their sled. It wasn’t actually very difficult, because they could put their noses through their own harnesses and squirm their way into them almost entirely on their own – it was just hooking them onto the gangline and putting on the silly little doggie booties, both task that required opposable thumbs, that caught them up.

Derek led them out from Willow, following the tracks of the dog team ahead of them, blood singing in his veins, the cold air sawing in and out of his lungs in a delicious sort of way.

Stiles and Lydia weren’t heavy. Most of the weight they were pulling was the sled itself, and their food.

Behind him, he could hear the powerful heartbeats of his alpha and his sister and their pack, and it felt _good_.

They wound their way through low rolling hills lightly forested with trees burdened with thick snow. Derek was aware, peripherally, of a road ten miles or so to the north, could smell the tar and the exhaust, and closer he could hear the light thrumming heartbeat of a fox and the squeaking a pair of minks and the shuffle of some tiny rodents under the snow.

At the Yentna Station checkpoint, he tolerated having his gums examined and paws and legs manipulated by the race vet.

“You’re good to go,” the vet told Stiles and Lydia, and they blitzed out of Yentna and onwards, passing two other teams that afternoon.

*

Their third morning started with a snow storm.

“Do we risk it?” Stiles asked Lydia, peeking out a tiny gap in the tent fly at the swirling snow, shivering, and hunching his shoulders up around his ears.

Lydia’s brow furrowed. “I don’t particularly _like_ the idea of freezing to death. And it’s not like we’re experienced with this sort of weather. I say we wait it out.”

Between them, Scott whined and dropped his head on his paws. Derek let out a long, slow sigh. Laura rolled onto her side, on top of Cora, and closed her eyes, clearly intent on getting some more sleep.

“Good idea,” Stiles told her.

*

On the fifth day, they started out again, somewhat discouraged to learn that they’d been passed by five teams who had braved the weather.

“Time to really run,” Stiles said.

*

They hit the Yukon River on the sixth day and encountered wolves. The first Stiles knew about it, Derek’s hackles were up. Then the sled was slowing and the pack was shrugging out of their harnesses to form a loose semi-circle around the sled, low growls rumbling deep in their chests, lips curled back over fangs.

The wolves came down out of the hills. They were a large pack, nine strong, led by an enormous grey creature with a silver ruff over its shoulders that glided over the snow as quietly as a ghost. Then Stiles saw its eyes flash red, and he understood.

They’d run across another pack’s territory.

The other alpha stepped forward, reared back onto its hind legs, and changed into a tall, broad-shouldered man with hair streaked grey and a leathery, weather-beaten face. Around him, his pack flashed gold eyes. Stiles caught glimpses of answering blue and gold from Malia and Erica and Ethan and Aiden and Isaac.

The other alpha appeared to be torn between anger and confusion.

“What are you _doing_?” he asked, at last.

Derek and Scott both glanced at Stiles, then at each other.

“We’re running the Iditarod,” Stiles called.

That didn’t seem to help the other alpha, because he was still frowning thunderously. “ _Why_?”

“Why not?”

“You’re on our territory,” the alpha said.

“Sorry. We didn’t know,” Stiles replied.

“You didn’t know,” the alpha snapped. “But you’re _human_.” He spat the word _human_ like an insult. “ _They_ know. You crossed the boundary two miles back.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, agreeably. “But we still have to finish the race.”

“Where’s your alpha?”

Scott barked, spun in the snow once, then pounced over to the sled where he stared up at Stiles, whining.

“What?” Stiles asked him. “Oh! Clothes. Hang on, alpha-dude. Two seconds!”

He rummaged around in the basket until he found one of the spare pairs of snow pants and a jacket for Scott, who ducked behind the sled to shift and pull them on before going back out to speak to the alpha himself.

“This _pup_ is the alpha?”

“He’s the True Alpha!” Stiles called.

“Stiles,” Scott groaned. “I can speak for myself.”

“Alright, just saying.”

The other alpha was looking at Scott with narrowed eyes. “You’re the Hale Pack. _You’re_ Alpha McCall? And those dark wolves must be the Hales. I didn’t know there were that many of you. Thirteen is a strong number.” He looked at Malia for a long moment, but didn’t comment on the fact that she was not a ‘wolf but a ‘coyote.

Scott scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, we had an encounter with a magic tree and our numbers are better now. This is Laura, she used to be the alpha, and that’s Peter – he was the alpha after her, and that’s Derek, and he was the alpha after Peter. And that’s Cora.” Cora yipped, but Derek snarled.

“Alpha power’s been being shared around an awful lot in your pack,” the other alpha said. “Yet none of you are dead. A magic tree, you said?”

“A Nemeton.”

“The Nemeton make you the True Alpha, too?”

Scott shook his head. “Nah, I did that by myself.”

“Hm.” The other alpha didn’t look convinced. “And who are these two humans?”

“Stiles is our emissary-in-training. And Lydia’s actually a banshee.”

“I’m gonna finish my training after college, but we need to win this race so I can go!” Stiles called.

The other alpha growled. Scott grinned appeasingly.

“I’m not going to try kill a True Alpha. Get off my territory as quickly as possible, though. Our range extends to thirty miles west. If you’re still here come nightfall, we’ll eat you.”

“I’d like to see you try!” Stiles called, as Scott shrugged the jacket and pants back off, dropping onto four paws as red-brown fur sprouted all over his body and the pack started squirming back into their harnesses. Before the other alpha could respond, they were racing away across the snow, chill air blowing in their faces.

Behind them, the other wolves started howling.

*

They ended their seventh day in fifth place at New Shaktoolik on the coast, with a little over two hundred miles to go.

The checkpoint was in the old armoury, and there was running water, for a change. The ‘wolves drank their fill, and then flopped around on the snow, weary but not ready to turn in. Stiles struggled with the big old iron pot over the fire, which he was making stew in while Lydia set up the tent. Because she was a lot better at technical things like putting up tents than he was.

As he dumped roughly chopped venison in with the frozen peas, he watched the dogs from team in third places scarfing their high-performance kibble, tails wagging and eyes bright, except for the one dog that had pulled up lame with a fractured leg and which was being loaded up to be helicoptered out in the morning.

“You’re not very doglike,” he told Derek, as he presented the big black ‘wolf with a steaming bowl of stew some forty minutes later. Derek sniffed at it carefully before beginning to lap at a chunk of meat. Derek paused for a moment, regarded Stiles, snorted, and went back to his stew.

“Whatever,” Stiles said, doling out more stew for Malia and Aiden, who had come sniffing around for seconds, and then thirds for Scott, who lashed his tail backwards and forwards wildly, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and his eyes bright. “You think you guys can run two hundred miles tomorrow, Scottie?”

Scot barked.

“Hey, Lydia,” Stiles called. “Dinner’s up!”

“Coming!”

She wandered over, brushing snow from her gloves, and Stiles handed her a bowl.

“You know,” she said. “Not that your cooking is bad, but I’ll be very glad when I can eat something other than stew for a change.”

“Yeah, me too,” Stiles agreed, searching for his spoon. Derek seemed to read his mind, and went and snuffled around in the snow, and returned with a slightly dirty spoon, but it had that scratch on the back, so it was definitely Stiles’. He wondered when he’d dropped it, then realised he had no idea, so he just wiped it off on the snow beside him and started eating.

“Sleeping in a hotel without a whole lot of _dogs_ on top of me? That’ll be _awesome_.”

Derek gave him a dirty look and lay down with his back to them, his ears back.

“You done good, dude. You got us this far safely,” Stiles told him, and he lay his head on his paws and appeared to go to sleep, though his ears were still twitching.

“Lyds,” Stiles said later, as they were struggling into their sleeping bags with snow-numb fingers and too many limbs from too many ‘wolves all trying to squirm in around them.

“Uh-huh?”

“Do you think we’ll make it, tomorrow?” he asked.

She considered that for a moment. “Well, the pack can run a steady fifteen miles per hour over long distances, go not much faster than ten in really bad conditions, and sprint thirty or forty in good conditions. If we do the entire two hundred miles tomorrow, we’ll be facing both good flat runs, and also inclines. The team in first place is already maybe fifty miles ahead of us – I’d say if we’re going to make it, we’ll need to be up by three, and away by three-thirty, and run most of the day.”

Stiles wiped a hand over his face, feeling the exhaustion settling into his bones at the very _thought_ of that early start. “Ugh. Okay. Set an alarm.”

Just behind his head, where she was curled up tight with her nose against her tail, Laura let out a piteous groan.

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “Me too.”

Lydia laughed.

*

They passed the team in second place just before they hit the sea ice, and then they slowed down because none of the ‘wolves liked the sound of the ice as it creaked and groaned, or the way it rolled gently with the waves beneath it. Everyone was glad when they turned inland and started climbing in the mountains, the wolves’ throwing themselves into their harnesses and digging in their claws as they hauled the sled upwards.

As the afternoon wore on, the wind started picking up, tossing up ground snow and blowing it into the faces of Stiles and Lydia, and making the ‘wolves snort and stumble when it got in their eyes.

“I’m getting cold,” Lydia muttered, near sundown.

“Yeah, me too,” Stiles said.

They took turns huddling in the basket and manning the sled’s breaks on the way down from White Mountain, and when they got to the long flats as night fell, they both stayed in the basket and trusted the ‘wolves to get them to the next checkpoint. Derek would lead them true, Stiles was certain of it, and sure enough he eventually felt the sled slow to a stop and someone shake his shoulder, and found he was at the Safety checkpoint.

They were almost there.

“Weather’s turning real bad,” one of the race officials said, worriedly, as the vet checked over Ethan’s paws by flashlight.

Stiles glanced at Lydia.

“What do we do?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Scott nudged Stile’s knee with his nose, then looked at the sled and back at Stiles, wagging his tail.

“You want to finish the race?” Stiles asked him.

Scott woofed.

“In this? Scottie, I think this might be a ground blizzard.”

Scott trotted to his harness and put his nose through it, then made a yipping noise. As one, the pack, who had been milling around, snuffing in the snow or – in the case of Peter – sleeping with his nose under his tail, assumed their positions along the gangline.

Derek yowled at Stiles and Lydia, who shared another glance.

“Guess that answers that.”

*

It was brutal, and the wind was frigid. Stiles lost track of time towards the end, everything becoming a nightmare of swirling white on a backdrop of blackness, accompanied by the sounds of panting and the jingle of harness. Occasionally, there came a distant wave crashing on the beach, or the clatter of claws over a rocky patch, and it would drag him back to reality for a moment, but then he started drifting again. He was so tired, and so _cold_.

“Son,” someone said. A man, maybe. “Son, are you all right?”

Stiles’ eyelashes were glued shut by icicles, and he rubbed at them feebly before blinking at the ghostly face of a man with a big, black mustachio and a lined, wrinkly face. Behind him in the basket, Lydia stirred before kneeing him in the kidney.

“Hi,” Stiles said. “Where are we?”

“Nome, son.”

“Oh.” They’d made it. They’d finished the race. They were all alive. He silently thanked the entire pack for getting them there safely. “What time is it? It feels like the middle of the night.”

“That’s because it’s just gone midnight,” the man said. “You two were both down here in the basket? Then who was driving the sled?”

Stiles glanced over his shoulder at the place where a musher should’ve been standing.

“Uh…”

“You’ve got one mighty intelligent lead dog there, son,” the man said, whistling softly to himself and helping Stiles and Lydia out of the basket. “Come on, let’s get you two inside. You look half dead. We’ve lost mushers in ground blizzards like these.”

“My—” he almost said _pack_ but caught himself. “My dogs. I gotta see to my dogs.” But the pack was already squirming out of the traces, their heads held low, limbs heavy, and a moment later they were surrounded by tired wolves, all of them pressing close to Stiles and Lydia, their paws stepping on their boots and their noses nudging their hands.

“That’s uncanny,” the man muttered. “We have people who will look after your dogs, son. Just come get yourself warmed up.”

Derek leant heavily against Stiles’ leg, forcing him to stagger in the direction of the little Nome hotel, and that decided it. He was handed a hot chocolate by a member of the staff and showed to a room right beside Lydia’s, where he curled up under the blankets and fell asleep before he could so much as sip his drink.

*

The following morning, Stiles woke up with Malia, as a coyote, and Scott, as a wolf, curled up on his bed. It actually took him quite a long time to realise this, and it was only after he’d spent half an hour luxuriating in the warm flannel sheets when he felt a cold nose press against his ear that he understood that there was something inherently wrong.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, tiredly. “No! You’re beasts! Both of you! Out, out!”

Scott and Malia fled the room, ears back, and Scott came back five minutes later, chuckling softly to himself, with Laura bouncing along by his side.

“Stiles,” Laura said. “That was amazing. Tiring, but amazing. Thank you for giving us this opportunity.” She sounded oddly formal, but she was grinning broadly.

 _Okay_ , Stiles thought.

“It was pretty awesome,” he said.

“It was!” Scott agreed. “I can’t believe we did it. We ran the entire thing. I feel great.”

“Well, I’m glad you feel great, because I’m wrecked,” Stiles said. “Wait – what do you mean, we did it?”

“Oh, you weren’t awake, I guess. We passed the team in first place just after we left the Safety checkpoint – we won, Stiles.”

*

It sure didn’t feel like winning, Stiles decided later, after suffering a lecture from his father about how it was better to be alive than to win, and he’d better be more careful next time.

Stiles had replied that he thought he’d been a lot safer running a dog race than he had in Beacon Hills during the past tumultuous years, and the Sheriff had gone oddly quiet, which made him feel sort of terrible.

*

“Well,” Scott said, a week later, as they were lazing in Stiles’ bedroom after a particularly trying lacrosse practise. School didn’t stop, even after you’d won an international race, it seemed, and they both had heaps of backed up work from all the time they’d missed. “I figure that you probably have a shot at getting some sort of sports scholarship now, too, being the youngest ever person to win the Iditarod and everything.”

Stiles blinked. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Derek, who was curled up on the floor as a wolf, sighed and tucked his nose under a paw.

**Author's Note:**

> haha so i forgot i wrote this but i did, way back in january and then i was just looking through my stories folder and i rediscovered it and was like 'wtf is this shit cluttering up my computer'
> 
> but then i reread it and was like 'lol where even did this come from'
> 
> i rly like dogs can u tell


End file.
